New Line to Remake Battle Royale

New Line Cinema announces plans to remake controversial Battle Royale.

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Hollywood hasn’t gotten tired of remaking popular Japanese films, it seems. ICv2 has announced that New Line Cinema, the studio behind the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and Blade film trilogy, has acquired the remake rights to Battle Royale, the controversial 2000 film based on the novel written by Koushan Takami, translated and released in North America by VIZ Media. It joins such remakes as The Ring, The Grudge and the upcoming Pulse.

The Battle Royale novel, manga (illustrated by Masayuki Taguchi and released in America by Tokyopop) and films (a sequel, Battle Royale II: The Requiem, was released in Japan) tells of a future where members of a high school class are placed on a deserted island and forced to fight and kill one another for three days until only one survives. The original film sparked large controversy in Japan, with its graphic violence and social themes, and has never seen official release in America (fun-subbed bootleg copies can be found at conventions), although it does have a UK release.

Little is known right now about the American remake of the film, such as cast and who is being considered to direct. What is known is that the producers involved with the project, Neal Moritz and Roy Lee, are no strangers to making Japanese-themed films. Moritz was involved in the recent The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, the third in the film series, while Lee worked on the American versions of The Ring and The Ring Two, both of which stared Naomi Watts.